Against the background of the increasing use of the Internet, the browsing of Web pages (hereinafter referred to as “pages”) on the Internet is widely done in recent years also on mobile terminal devices such as cellular phones and PDAs. However, content on the Internet is created generally for PCs (Personal Computers) having relatively large screens, and thus the browsing of pages on a mobile terminal device having a relatively small screen and restricted types of mountable operation keys can result in deteriorated convenience for the user compared to the browsing of pages on a PC.
For example, in the case of a frame page (a page expressed by use of the <frameset> tag), displaying the page on a small display screen results in low visibility of the displayed content since the frame page is segmented into a plurality of frames. Configurations for improving the user convenience during the frame display have been proposed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 344590 (hereinafter referred to as a “document No. 1”), Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. 2000-298543 (hereinafter referred to as a “document No. 2”) and Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. 2002-268788 (hereinafter referred to as a “document No. 3”) as described below.
The document No. 1 describes the switching between a whole display screen including a plurality of frames and a zoom display screen of a frame according to a user operation through a tablet during the display of a page including a plurality of frames. In the case where a frame is displayed in the zoom display, a partial display icon indicating the position of the currently zoom displayed frame in the page is displayed on a part of the display screen.
The document No. 2 describes the switching of an active frame by operating a switching button in the state in which the whole display screen including a plurality of frames has been displayed or in the state in which the zoom display screen of a frame has been displayed. The switching buttons are displayed on a part of the screen and the switching of the active frame is performed by the user by designating a switching button by use of an input pen.
The document No. 3 describes the zoom display of a selected frame which is made when a frame is selected by the user in a state in which a page including a plurality of frames has been displayed. In the zoom display state of a frame, the user is allowed to perform operations such as anchor selection. The frame selection is made by the user by performing an operation such as a key entry.